This post was prompted as a teaching from Scripture based on a question that I receved from one of my friends on Facebook. So, follower of Yeshua, what follows are some thoughts on the concept of a sausage factory versus the kind of factory that blesses the L-rd.
Someone once asked me to break down the concept of a sausage factory and what I meant by that, given I use the term a lot.
I was going to respond to that, but I think Donald Hardy does a superb job concisely describing it in the above comment, so I posted his thoughts above, and then I will expand on his commentary with a few thoughts of my own.
Basically, sausage factories = any place where the products made are belched out with grinding efficiency and made to look identical one to another.
If we are supposed to conform to the image of Christ, however, what is wrong with this, and can I back this up with Scripture?
The problem is that we were each designed by our Creator, the Everlasting Father, with a unique design that is set up to fit hand-in-glove somewhere in this world. And this world, while for a season has been made subjected to futility (Romans 8:20), was also designed to experience liberation. That liberation comes through sons who step into sonship.
Sonship Defined
And what do sons do? Well, for starters, they survey around them and see what tools they have on hand, and they use those tools to solve problems that face them. A son was designed to give and build. A son was made to create.
And as we step into the L-rd more fully and progress in our walk with Him, we move from bondage to obedience. And obedience is not the end game. Obedience is the midpoint in our journey from bondage and slavery. The end game is sonship and freedom to act. As we mature in the fruit of the Spirit, we grow more like Him, and He gives us some choices to act, and there are consequences that follow as effects from the causes that are our actions.
Don’t shoot me for not talking about daughters, ladies. We as men are the bride of Christ, and you as ladies are the Sons of G-d.
Congratulations, life is uncomfortable for everyone.
Think about it. A bride is made for receiving intimacy from her husband in varied forms. A bride receives.
And a son gives out. It’s a pattern of two. Giving and receiving. Male and female. Evening and morning. Intimacy and Donimion.
Note how the church is mentioned in the New Testament versus the Kingdom. The flavors of the passages are different. Those are not a single entity, but two seperate entities.
And on the complementing end of the spectrum, a son gives out. He or she builds the Kingdom using the tools and plans given him or her by the King. As noble subjects of our King, we start out by hearing what the L-rd wants, as Moses began when he came to the L-rd (the L-rd told him what to do in the beginning with the plagues and presenting himself to Pharaoh), and then the L-rd begins the process of transitioning us to devising solutions to problems. Note the progression and growth of Moses from Exodus 3 – Exodus 14:15.
In the issue with the serpents first trio of plagues, Moses spoke to Aaron, Aaron spoke to Pharoah, and Aaron performed the acts with his staff (Exodus 7:9; 7:13; 7:19-20; 8:6; 8:16-17) In the next trio of plagues, G-d removes a set of training wheels as it were and says “Moses goes in to speak to Pharaoh”. Much less Aaron involvement (8:20; 9:1; 9:10). For the final 3 plagues, Moses does them without Aaron’s involvement.
And then for the Red Sea incident, the L-rd utters a curious phrase. “Why are you crying to me?” Meaning: you are a son and have matured. You can exercise some crativity. That is something you say to a son who has a library of understanding and growth and tools that he can use to build.
Likewise, in our relationship with the L-rd, as we begin, we work at hearing G-d’s voice, and merely doing what He says.
But as we progress, the L-rd says about certain things “you have faced this circumstance before, and now like a Father who has equipped His son, I am going to step back a little bit, though I am still near you and watch you engage with the tools we have designed together.”
And, brother or sister, it is okay. He has not gone AWOL or left the shop where we are. He is allowing us to experiment with the tools we have been given by Him to figure some things out. He is sitting on his stool and smiling at us as we grow to be more like him. There is sweat on our faces and oil mingling with concrete, or sawdust on the floor of the shop, or the acrid scent of solder or torch-cut metal.
And as we become more familiar with the tools that are the principles of Scripture, we begin to move toward our design and destiny for which He has hardwired us.
And that destiny is unique for each of us.
This is why in Scripture, Paul talks about “One body with many members”. It is not about us each looking the same or being the same or acting the same. G-d knew when He made each of us, that we were made to do something unique. None of us has a truly identical purpose one to another.
Let’s ingest this following passage and hunt for the details.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
1 Corinthains 12:12-26 ESV
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
You are not a sausage, follower of Christ. You are a unique individual. You are a fruit factory. A tree in the garden of the L-rd.
And you were made to take the finite principles Father gives you, and weave them together into a nearly infinite series of solutions to solve problems that you face.
So many are parroting the same answer to the same problems, whether that problem is political, or church-related, or culturally-related. You have the capacity, and as a pastor, I give you the permission to walk freely in your design to be a fruit tree that produces solutions to problems no one else is solving, and to develop the skills necessary to prossess your unique birthright.
And by the way, as sons in the kingdom, you are also leaders. You are not followers. This is not about merely ceding your authority to someone else. Rather, it is about stepping into the authority He has given you and which you have spent years earning.
So, I end this with a Blessing of your spirit.
Beloved, I call your spirit to attention in Jesus’ name.
Spirit, listen to the word of G-d for you for today.
“The L-RD G-d took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15 ESV
Spirit, your Father created Adam for a purpose, to work and tend the Garden of the L-rd East in Eden. This garden was an excellent ecosystem, but there were still animals to name and design and tools to unpack and learn to use. The man was made to work the garden. He was made to unpack horticulture, and animal husbandry, and a vast array of agricultural and ecological issues. He was given problems and two paths to potential solutions.
1) Take from the tree of knowledge.
2) Take his problems and talk to the L-rd or within himself and his G-d-given spirit to unpack tools to solve those problems.
Likewise, spirit, you also have been magnificently designed to solve a particular set of problems. You were hardwired for something or made for something.
So, I bless you to turn your face to Father, and receive from Him all the instructions and software necessary to unpack what is in you and what is in your heart and what is in your situation that needs solving. You have deep and complex problems that you face each day, and those require complex solutions that are created from the weaving together of principles (cause-and-effect relationships).
Orville and Wilbur Wright did not get the plane off the ground without methodical research into weather and air patterns, the flight of birds, the consideration of different materials, and the sowing together of those materials into a right design, turn, lift, descent, glide, thrust, as well as the right piece of land.
Spirit, the aviation industry is rife with the designs of the Wright Brothers that were meshed together. Wilbur was a Prophet by Redemptive Gift (Romans 12:6-8), and Orville was a Teacher.
Prophets naturally lend themselves to strong emotions, quick movements, ideological bents, and the new, bleeding-edge, technology, and a singular sense of humor that mostly leads to snark. They are always pushing forward based on their amazing capacity to solve problems and fix things, and they often are held in disdain because they see a problem usually before anyone else, even fi they get a little tunnel-visioned in their focused intensity.
Teachers, on the other hand, are the consummate safe havens, anchors, and tinkerers in the world. They experiment and go back and refine a hundred times over. And they are meticulous in their research and background information and history and devotion to the old. And they have a singular wit and a lively sense of humor.
Spirit, as a result, they gave birth to the aviation industry by creating a glider, but they also caused the aviation industry to thrive because they had more concern for their fellow man who was injured more than the destruction of the Flyer 1.
So, spirit, I bless you not only to weave together principles when the L-rd places you in your “garden”, but also to hear the L-rd when He tells you to go do thus and so.
I bless you to follow what the L-rd has put into you, and to unpack the treasures, even if the rest of the world, and G-d forbid, even the church says “You are not supposed to go that way or do this, because a good Christian looks like this, not that”.
I bless your pursuit of your original design and purpose.
I bless you to speak up so that the person in which you dwell hears you and moves with you.
I bless your design to hear and relay the voice of G-d in the midst of a world et up with arrogance, woundedness, and pride.
I bless you to fight for your two feet of breathing room, and I bless you to know the King more deeply as you are unpacked.
I bless you to be at peace and wholeness even when no-one but the L-rd supports your journey, in the name of Yeshua.
So be it.
